Pig kidney functioning normally one month after transplant into brain-dead man

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – In a breakthrough for organ transplant medical research, the kidney of a genetically modified pig is reported to be working normally one month after surgeons at America’s NYU Langone Health Institute transplanted it into a brain-dead man on July 14, Time reports.

With more than 100,000 US patients awaiting organ transplants, and thousands dying each year, scientists have been learning how to use pig organs to make up for the shortage in human organs available. Until now, animal-to-human transplants have failed as human immune systems attacked the animal tissue, Time notes. Accordingly, researchers have begun using pigs that are genetically modified to better match human bodies.

In a statement Wednesday, the NYU Langone Health team working on the transplanted pig kidney announced that this was the longest a pig kidney had continued to function inside a brain-dead person, and that they are set to track the kidney’s function for a second month, Time reports. The experiment is considered a vital step toward eventually transplanting a pig kidney into a living patient.

“Is this organ really going to work like a human organ? So far it’s looking like it is,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of NYU Langone’s transplant institute, told The Associated Press. “It looks even better than a human kidney,” Montgomery said on July 14 as he replaced the deceased man’s two kidneys with the single pig kidney, and noted it immediately began to produce urine.

The US Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to allow small, rigorous studies of pig heart or kidney transplants in volunteer patients.

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